Apollo and The Beast
by Mulderzkid
Summary: Lee’s first order of business aboard The Beast is to not move out of the XO’s quarters.


Instead of grading my students' essays on whether or not Gatsby is a stalker or a romantic, I had to write this little piece of funness.

FIC: Apollo and the Beast  
Ali Cherry (Mulderzkid)  
Rating: K  
Genre: General  
Summary: Lee's first order of business aboard The Beast is to not move out of the XO's quarters.

Lee's first order of business aboard The Beast is to not move out of the XO's quarters. He smiles blandly at Hoshi as the man helps him to the Commander's rooms.

"I'll be staying in the XO's quarters."

Hoshi stares at him blankly, "But they're smaller, sir."

"Nevertheless, I'll be staying in the XO quarters." Lee has seen the floor and furniture sprayed with Fisk's blood, seen the stain underneath the carpet from Cain's death, and he refuses to enter the mouth of the beast submissively. If it's going to kill him, he's going to go down fighting.

(BSG)

Lee sets up a bulletin board next to door, labels it in his head, "The Deadly Sins of The Beast." He pins up Cain, and a picture of a gun. He pins up Fisk and a cubit. He pins up Garner and the watch.

He hates that the watch has to be on the board. It meant a lot to Garner. It means a lot to Lee. But this board is to help him keep perspective and he knows he's going to frak up royally at some point. He'd just rather not make the same mistakes as the people before him. He relabels it in his head "The Deadly Sins of Command."

Whenever he finds himself heading in the wrong direction he pins something else on the board. "Arrogance" because he remembers Cain, Adama, Roslin, Adar, Nagala, Tigh, Fisk, even Garner had this flaw; everyone he has ever met in command has had this flaw. And he knows it's one of his own flaws.

"Trust" goes up next. He doesn't trust The Beast's crew, and they don't trust him. They have lost 3 commanders and Lee is just the Admiral's son to them. He was not well liked by their first or second commander. He tries not to think about what the mutiny says about him in their eyes. Lee knows he's become the by-the-book-bastard he was in the first few days on Galactica. He prefers to be called "Commander Tightass" rather than "Commander Tightpants."

He misses being Captain Apollo.

"Olympic Carrier" on faded paper is tacked up next because Lee thinks of this board as his desk drawer. He remembers the death of the ship vividly. He won't forget what it signifies to him.

He tacks up a picture of Starbuck. It makes him laugh; she is one of the hardships of command. Wild, free, uninhibited, out of the box, and when she isn't frakking up at full speed, then she's right… dead to rights. He likes to know there is a friendly face when he's contemplating all the things that can go wrong in his job. "_You are the worst CAG in the history of CAGs_." It helps him keep perspective.

He has a picture of Ellen Tigh on the board, one he confiscated from the Pilot ready room with graffiti scrawled all over it. "Super Slut," "Lushy Lady," "Queen Bitch," "Power Broker." He finds excuses not to attend command dinners on the Galactica now. Instead he invites his father to dine with him in the unused Commander's quarters, which still show no sign of inhabitance. The Old Man merely raises an eyebrow when Lee goes back to his room for a report he needs.

Lee doesn't know when, but Hoshi and Thornton hang another board in his cabin, at the end of his rack. When he's on duty, they hang good things about command on it.

A picture of a marine's sharp salute to him. He smiles because it is very gratifying that the same marine who forced him out of CIC that day on Garner's orders smiles at him as he passes every morning.

There is a picture of him with a group of sweaty command officers who try to keep up with him every morning as he runs the length of the ship and back. Usually they're trying to catch him to sign off on this report or that.

There is Lee tossing a helmet in a ceremony for a 1000 landing. The keep-away game is bitter-sweet because he will always remember Flattop's tragedy.

They add words like "Trust" to the board because they trust him to get the job done.

They pin up the horrible towel picture which someone released to the fleet, but someone on The Beast has drawn clothes on him and added the words, "That's our Commander you're ogling." He's pretty sure the picture was supposed to be a joke in the pilot quarters, but it's the thought that counts.

It is Captain Case who hands him the picture of his father and himself leaning on the planning table on the Galactica, staring at the board in front of him. Tigh is shadowed in the background, but someone has written in the words, "Father and Son, Protectors of the Fleet."

He laughs at the handkerchief one of them has put on the board because it's for wiping off the drool. Whenever Hoshi or Thornton wake him off duty to hand him papers they find him just pulling his head out of a pool of drool on the paperwork on his desk. He forgot when he took this position that The Beast is home to the Viper Factory, the Combat Training Program, it runs three quarters of the supply runs, half of the CAPs, as well as being twice the size of Galactica with three times the crew.

Lee tacks up "meetings" to the sins of command board because he's always meeting with this department or that head, and he is generally grateful that he doesn't have Cottle or Starbuck on his staff because he could not handle the extra grief they would give him, or the disciplinary meetings he would have to attend because of them.

Lee pins up a picture of a coffee cup to his happy board as he thinks of it. The coffee is so much better on The Beast; Fisk's contacts obviously still provide the good stuff to the Pegasus. No one tells him that the good stuff comes from the leaders of the Black Market to keep Lee happy. Everyone is well aware of the cautious blind eye that watches the_ Prometheus_ like a hawk.

Lee likes to impress his father with the stash of booze that sits generally unopened in the Commander's quarters. He likes to offer cigars even though he knows that they were bought with Shavon's child, and his own neck, and Fisk's blood. But it is a small comfort and a secret pride to hand these tokens out to good pilots, marines, snipes, deck gang, and command crew when he can.

He doesn't think about how much he lives for those dinners with his father, or Starbuck coming over for a courier run, or Gaeta sneaking over for a Triad game, but Lee feels suddenly that the crews of the two battlestars become a more nature piece of the whole. He likes The Beast, trusts its crew, and likes having the distance to run in the morning.

But he still won't move into Commander's quarters. He refuses to submissively allow The Beast to eat him.

The end


End file.
